You'd hate to see it, but you'd REALLY hate to miss it

So last Friday there was a big gala at school, dedicating the building now that it has been renamed the "Charles M. Harper Center". Getting your name on the building costs about $50 Million, and Mr. Harper ponied up. It's yet another sign of progress for the GSB (Now #1 in both BusinessWeek and The Economist).

Back to the gala: the decor included a stadium-sized jumbotron (in a much-smaller-than-a-stadium indoor atrium space) and, for some bizarre reason, wooden model airplanes suspended from wires some 20 feet above the floor. As some friends and I were trying to figure out why they chose to decorate with 15-foot wooden airplanes (metaphor? aeronautical feng-shui? they were out of crepe paper?) we saw a man in a cherry picker wield some wire cutters and go to work on one of the wires they had strung between pillars to hang the planes from. Now, these wires would have to be pretty tight, and as my gaze wandered to a pair of students standing below, I couldn't help but wonder if the wire had enough tension that, when cut, it would whistle through the air with enough force to slice somebody in half. I mentioned this to my friend. We immediately commented on how horrible that would be; yet we were unanimous in our feeling that if it's going to happen, and we're going to be nearby anyways, it would be a shame to miss it.

Just then, the man in the cherry picker asked the students below to step out of the way, then proceeded to cut the wire. We watched it fall harmlessly--it wasn't that tight, apparently--to the ground below. We left feeling relieved, disappointed, and mostly relieved that we were more relieved than disappointed.